They say, “befriend your enemies”, but, artist AP Shreethar has gone one step further and glorified them. The invention of the camera and photography, ensured slowly but steadily that artists were relegated to the background which eventually brought about their downfall, some of them even committing suicide because of poverty.

AP Shreethar echoes the sentiments of his mentor, Mr.Raja Bharani who always stated that with the advent of photography, the demand for realistic painting and real artists came down drastically. He also reminisces his mentors’ teachings on the proximity of camera and paintings during his early days and how photography demolished the lives of artists. The reason being, people were more attracted to the perfection a photography achieves as well as the time period it consumed for bringing alive a moment in their lives as well as retaining such moments as memories. The many “isms” like surrealism, modernism, cubisim, though brought to fore new abstract artists, but was also responsible for the diminishing of real time artists.

Artist Shreethar, who has travelled extensively and conducted 64 shows all over in a span of 14 years, was always in pursuit of this enemy and was inspired to gather all the ‘enemies’ at one place and put it up for display, to make people understand that every evolution silently signals the death of a bygone era.